Apps & Software

Stop and Frisk Monitoring App Comes to iPhone

The New York Civil Liberties Union released the iPhone version of its Stop and Frisk Watch app on Thursday, putting the police encounter documentation tool in the hands of thousands of additional New Yorkers.

Stop and Frisk Watch [iTunes link] is a mobile application designed to help citizens document police abuse stemming from the New York Police Department's controversial criminal prevention program commonly referred to as "stop and frisk." Users can record video, audio and geolocation data whenever they witness a police stop and the information is automatically sent to the NYCLU. The app also has a "listen" function which, when enabled, and using GPS data, alerts the user whenever somebody else is using Stop and Frisk Watch in the vicinity.

Seven months after its release, the Android version of the app has been downloaded more than 20,000 times. The organization has received more than 5,000 videos, as well as 1,000 written reports, "including documentation of police officers being verbally abusive during street stops, of officers drawing weapons during street stops, and one incident in which an officer used the floodlights of his car to prevent a bystander from recording video of a stop-and-frisk," according to a press release.

However, many of the videos sent in aren't relevant to the NYCLU's work — of those 5,000 submissions, only 200 document police incidents.

"Most of our submissions were of people just trying the app out – or in the case of the police officers in the video, flipping us off – which created a lot of needless video review for our attorneys," Jennifer Carnig, the Director of Communications of the NYCLU said in an email to Mashable.

Being able to offer the app for iOS users allows the campaign to have a wider reach. "It’s important that it’s available for iPhone because that means that even more New Yorkers will have an easy, free way to hold the NYPD accountable, – a tool they can have in their pockets at all times," Carnig wrote.

The so-called stop and frisk program allows police officers in New York to stop and search people if they deem them suspicious. The program was started to give police a better tool to prevent crime, especially in high-risk locations. Civil rights organizations, however, have criticized it, saying it leads to racial profiling and illegal searches. According to an NYPD report [PDF Link] released on Monday, 9 out of 10 people searched in 2012 were minorities.

When the civil rights organization released the Android app, it promised to publish the iPhone version by July 2012. Seven months later, the app is ready. Carnig said that the delay was caused by two things. "First, the iPhone is just not as flexible of a platform as Android so we had to make adjustments to the actual functionality of the app (no outside trigger button, for example)," she wrote.

The second reason was the Apple app review process, which, according to her, was "slow and opaque." The first time the NYCLU applied to have the app in the App Store, Apple rejected it because it didn't make a sound when it started recording. "So we were forced to add a quiet ding. I don’t think it hurts the app, but clearly it’s not something we wanted and it required further development,” Carnig said.

When a user records a video, he is asked to add circumstantial information to the report, like the location of the incident, the age and ethnicity of the person stopped, and how the officers behaved (whether they used force or whether they identified themselves.)

Stop and Frisk Watch has been criticized by police authorities. Paul J. Browne, the NYPD chief spokesman told The New York Times that providing information on where police is conducting searches could help criminals, and, according to him, the app might also raise privacy issues.

Mashable reached out to the NYPD for comment about the Stop and Frisk app. Paul J. Browne, the Deputy Commissioner of the NYPD responded: "Finally, a bonus for perps who steal iPhones; an app that tells them how to avoid police."

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